On a record cold morning in January of 2014, I became a mother for the second time, to a beautiful 8 pound baby girl. I had wondered how my heart could possibly love another baby the way I loved my first. The second I laid eyes on her my heart grew. I knew the love I had for her and her sister had no end.
The last weeks of pregnancy
On Thanksgiving day I started having contractions at 35 weeks pregnant. I drank water and laid down but after an hour I was still experiencing consistent contractions. I was advised to go to labor and delivery where is was confirmed to be preterm contractions. That was terrifying to hear!
I was checked and thankfully I was 0cm dilated. They were going to administer a medication to try and stop the contractions and would let my body deliver if I went into full blown labor. They gave me the shot we waited. That was a very weird hour of waiting. Waiting to see if the contractions would stop or if I would have my baby that day. Thankfully it worked and the contractions stopped! I had to wait another hour after that just to make sure I wasn’t dilating. Everything looked great and I could go home.
The weeks following my preterm labor were very uneventful, but at 39 weeks I was ready for the contractions. And, they didn’t come. In fact, I made it to my 40-week due date!! Which seemed so crazy since I was in the hospital for preterm labor 5 weeks prior. At my 40 week appointment I was still not dilated. It’s so disappointing to hear ZERO especially when 40 weeks. I couldn’t understand how 1) I had all those contractions and now not a single one, and 2) with my first baby I was 3cm at 39 weeks and went into labor. I was frustrated but had to accept that every pregnancy is different.
Labor and Delivery
At 12:45 in the morning, 3 days after my 40 week appointment, I woke up to a contraction. The contractions started out more as intense cramping, but they were consistent. I went into the bathroom and got ready to distract myself while waiting to see if this was real labor. By 1:30am the contractions were 5 minutes apart and painful. I could not talk very well through them and needed to either squat down or hold onto something during them.
The car ride to the hospital was awful. Having painful contractions that were getting more intense and not being able to move was the worst. We got to the hospital at 2:00am. A painful contraction came while at the nurse’s station. The nurses skipped triage and took me right back to a room. I was quickly checked and had gone from 0cm dilated to now 6cm dilated.
I was starting to feel extremely nauseous, like I had the stomach flu. Later I found out this can happen when you are laboring fast and starting transition labor. I said I was feeling sick to the point where I couldn’t focus on the contractions and with the next contraction panic set in.
In the middle of nausea, pain and panic the doctor arrived, looked me in the eyes and instructed me to breathe. She took over the room and I started feeling more in control again. At 2:15am I was 8cm dilated, the doctor broke my water and said let’s get you delivered!
Intense contractions started and in less than 5 minutes I was 10cm and could start pushing. The doctor was amazing and kept me focused through the pushing. After 20 minutes, at 2:41am, only 2 hours from the first contraction, my beautiful daughter was born.
First Moments
They put her on my chest and all I saw was a miniature me. My husband cut the umbilical cord- something he didn’t get to do with our first. This labor and delivery was both similar and different from my first. I had a natural birth similar to my first, but I never expected it to be this fast. I was at the hospital for 10 hours with my first and 40 minutes with my second. At least that prepared me for what my third birth experience would be like. Read about it here.
Read my other birth stories!
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